If you’re a storytime librarian, a preK teacher, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, grandparent, sibling, etc., you have to take some time to explore Jbrary’s website. Jbrary is the brain child of two children’s librarians in Vancouver, British Columbia and it’s an absolutely amazing resource filled with books, songs, fingerplays, rhymes and more. And the best part is that they film the songs for their YouTube channel, making it so easy to learn (especially for tone-deaf librarians like myself!)

My own storytime has benefited greatly from the resources I’ve found on Jbrary. If you only try one new song in the next year – my kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Fruit Salad (and Bananas Unite and See the Little Bunnies Sleeping and… you get the idea), basically everything I’ve tried my kids go crazy for!

And you need to stop by and see the 2016 Favorite Storytime Picture Books – all books published over the course of the past year that are tried and true books perfect for sharing one-on-one or with a larger group! What’s great is that there are books on this list for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and early elementary school, so no one will feel left out! So take some time to check out this amazing resource that just might make life a little easier when planning storytime or sharing time with your favorite little ones!

Today is Read for the Record Day, a national campaign created by Jumpstart as the world’s largest shared reading experience to promote reading to preK children and to highlight how many children are not prepared for Kindergarten when they reach their first year of school. Last year 2.2 million children and adults from around the world shared Not Norman: A Goldfish Story written by Kelly Bennett and illustrated by Noah Z. Jones

This year’s choice – The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach about a bear’s wonderful adventures, a missing sandwich and a fun twist you won’t be expecting. Both of our storytimes today will be reading for the record and we’ll be recording our attendance on the Read for the Record Day website! You can to, just stop by the website and register to read! Then, take a few minutes today to snuggle with your little ones and read The Bear Ate Your Sandwich or check it out at Brightly where they created a brand-new aspect of their site – Brightly Storytime, just in time for Read for the Record! This is perfect for families who don’t have a copy of this book in their home library and it’s a great chance to share technology together as a family. Plus, Brightly has a TON of great information about books, reading and families, so take a few minutes to see what’s new!

Each year we celebrate all the little ones who have completed our 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten – many are students entering Kindergarten, but others are still little ones who have been reading since they were a few months old. We try to hold our party in August before school starts to celebrate these families who put an emphasis on early literacy at home!

I start the program off in a joking way, telling the families that they may have read 1,000 books, but we’re going to read another together! This year I chose crowd-favorite characters – Elephant & Piggie! I love the way Mo Willems creates these characters and you can’t find a better book for reading aloud (especially if you have two people!). I went with I Really Like Slop in which Piggie is sharing all that she loves about slop with Elephant. Elephant gamely decides to try slop even with the flies buzzing around it and what ensues is hysterical! The kids were giggling up a storm – which was awesome!

After we read our story, we had a very special project to work on – sensory bottles! This created absolute mayhem in our programming room, but the kids (and adults) seemed to really enjoy it! I bought Voss water bottles from Amazon. Ours were a little smaller than the typical bottle (330 ml vs. 500 ml), but they were the perfect size for our sensory bottles. And for 12 bottles for $9.99, I couldn’t pass it up. I then hit up our local dollar store for confetti, glitter, beads, and googly eyes to fill our bottles, plus funnels (3 for $1). I also grabbed generic baby oil and food coloring from Target and superglue to close up the bottles.

We used the Lemon Lime Adventures blog post as a basic set of instructions, emptied about a 1/3 of the water (used it later for refreshments) and then allowed the kids to add to the bottles the little trinkets they wanted. With adult help, we added a drop of food coloring (you don’t need very much – it get’s too dark) and the baby oil. We then super glued the cap closed and the kids LOVED it!

This project was not for the faint of heart – it required a bunch of supplies and trust in the adults helping, a lot. But if you have a smaller crowd, it’s a great activity that kids will definitely love doing and the parents enjoyed it because their house wasn’t covered in glitter by the end of the evening!